The ear-splitting wail of Canary Cry
echoed through Wayne Manor while Selina marched calmly through the chaotic
battle as if through holograms. She offered a light fingertip wave to
the chimera of a mind-controlled Martian Manhunter swinging Superman into a
headlock.

“Morning, Boys” she said sweetly.

A pink, fin-headed alien lifted
Hawkman by the throat and yanked the wings from his back in a single vicious
stroke.

“My favorite part,” Selina noted.
“Now cue the clock.”

As he had every 43 minutes since the
anomalies began, Hawkman picked up the grandfather clock and brought it
crashing down onto Batman’s head. Batman answered with a fierce
uppercut… and Selina blew him a kiss.

“Big red robot,” she said, pointing,
just before Red Tornado entered. “Superman,” she added swinging her
arm to point in the opposite direction just before Superman charged to the
spot. “And the tnuc,” Selina added, pointing upward just as Zatanna
materialized from above.

Selina gave her the finger before
strolling through the gaping hole into the clock passage and proceeding down
to the cave.

“43 minutes,” she announced.
“You can set your clock by it. At least you’ll be able to once the
clock resets itself for the next show.”

Batman didn’t turn from his workstation but Jason smiled politely.

“Good morning,” he said mildly.
“I trust you slept well.”

“Yeah, ‘Kreee’ shaking the plaster off
the walls every 43 minutes makes for a wonderfully restful night. Not
to mention who is doing the kree-ing and who she has with her.
You don’t imagine either of us would get a wink of sleep with… with them
running amok in this house.”

Jason made a sour face; Selina watched the back of Batman’s head.

“Have you had coffee?” she called softly.

“No.”

“I could make some,” she offered, “unless you’d prefer tea?”

There was no response, but Selina was
unfazed. She walked up behind his chair and turned it around to face
her.

“Hi,” she said simply. “I called
Alfred, I told to him take another week in Vermont. He wants to know
why and I couldn’t really figure out how to phrase it, so you’re on your own
for that one. Number is next to the phone in the kitchen. When
you’re ready to take a break from all this, go up and give him a call.”

Jason was amused to see the intensity
of the Batman persona flicker a bit during her speech.

“Anything new upstairs?” he asked.

“It’s all new,” she said. “Apart
from the Justice League Rockettes doing their kickline in the study every 43
minutes, all the rest of it seems like these random one-shots. I saw
Dick around age 15 sneak into his room upstairs with a couple -ahem-
magazines I doubt he was allowed to read at that age, and a costume party
going on in the Great Hall. You were Henry VIII, which I must say
isn’t an ideal look for you, but I made a stunning Catherine of Aragon, so
we’ll assume that’s why you went along with it. And, oh yes, Ivy—I’m
not kidding, Queen Chlorophyll herself wearing little more than a leaf and a
smile—out on the patio. We will not discuss what she was doing out
there, other than to say it’s lucky for you that I know that’s an alternate
universe.” She broke into an exaggerated cheery smile. “So
what’s happening down here?”

“For now, the dimensional anomalies
seem confined to the house,” Batman noted dryly. “Dr. Leiverman is
checked in at the Hyatt and the Wayne Foundation has provided him with an
office in town, all the computer resources he’ll need, and Oracle has
established a shielded network so we can send him as much data as… as is
prudent. He says he’ll be available 24/7 for any kind of consultation
until this is over.”

“24/7,” Selina noted. “He’s
another one that doesn’t eat and sleep, I take it?”

“No scientist would sleep with
something like this dangling in front of him,” Batman told her. “He
knows only a tenth of what’s really happening and he had tears in his eyes:
culmination of his life’s work, etc.”

“Okay,” Selina said with that distinct
‘humor and handle them’ expression. “That’s Alfred, and Dr. Leiverman.
Now how are you?”

“I’ve finally mapped out that scene
looping in the study,” Batman answered brusquely. “Still a fair amount
of conjecture, since we can’t hear much of what’s being said. And
given the speed and violence of the battle playing out, it’s not easy to
read their lips. But the alien is called Despero; he obviously has
mind control abilities and he evidently took control of several leaguers at
some point before the… the anomaly that we’re seeing begins. He
appears to have had Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, and “me” to start with,
picked up Black Canary and Green Lantern as he went along, leaving Flash,
Green Arrow, and Hawkman to fare as best they could—which isn’t very well
from the looks of it. Superman seems intent on protecting Alfred, who
I’m evidently trying to attack… Despero goes after Superman; Red Tornado
intervenes. Zatanna appears, freezes Despero, and uses magic to snap
everyone out of it.”

“Fascinating,” Selina said, like she’d rather have heard Joker tell the
octopus joke.

“From the body language and the remarks I was able to observe, I suspect
this League’s history isn’t very different from ours,” Batman said coldly.

“I see,” Selina murmured. Then
in an obvious attempt to change the subject, she turned to Jason.
“Ettie have any input on this?”

“Etrigan has not spoken since his
outburst yesterday when the two of you looked into the water. He’s gone
quiet before and it’s usually bad news, but this feels very different.
This is… When an animal is sick or injured, it retreats from the world, an
instinct to hide itself lest it appear weak before predators.”

“You’re saying Etrigan is
hiding under the bed like a puppy with a warm nose?”

“Not a perfect analogy, perhaps,”
Jason admitted. “All I can say is it doesn’t feel like one of
his conniving silences. I believe something is… very, very wrong.”

Batman touched several controls on the
workstation and a large hologram of the manor floorplan appeared in the
center of the cave. He took a light pen and marked off the upstairs
hallway leading to the bedrooms and the Great Hall. Then he turned to
Selina.

“Where did you say Ivy appeared?” he asked casually.

“North corner of the patio,” she
answered just as calmly. “We’re charting the dimension leaks,” she
told Jason sweetly. “When reality bubbles are popping all around you,
you’ve got to do something to stay grounded, and we’re doing this.”

“Can we be so sure these are
dimensional variations and not temporal ones?” Jason asked, trying to get
into the nonchalant spirit of the conversation.

“Yes, we can,” Selina said firmly.
She turned away, rather less casually, and joined Batman at the hologram.
She pointed to a glowing mark on the grid, indicating (Jason surmised) the
apparition of a costume party in the Great Hall. She said something
softly, and Batman tapped a small palm console with a stylus. A time
notation appeared next to the glowing point on the hologram. They
repeated this exercise for the patio and the upstairs hallway.

Jason cleared his throat, prepared to
try again.

“What I meant was that the first of these ‘visions’ to manifest was the
final confrontation between Azrael and Batman, which really occurred in our
reality, didn’t it Bruce, in just the way you saw?”

“Jason, for pity’s sake!” Selina
exclaimed, wheeling on him like a charging wildcat, “Did you not see
that goggled, flat chested insult to all things Catwoman straight out of the
pages of the Gotham fucking Post standing in the study every 43 minutes?”

Batman gave the console a final tap and turned silently back to his
workstation, absorbing himself in the graphs on the screen. Jason
Blood, he reflected, might be an immortal with the experience of a dozen
lifetimes under his belt, he might have seen nether realms and possess
magical sensitivities that could foresee a man’s destiny or penetrate secret
identities—but never had the limitations of “special powers” been
clearer if, for all those advantages, he didn’t know better than to pull
that particular cat’s tail.

Neither Bruce nor Batman had mentioned
the “goggle-cat” in the Justice League scene since the apparition’s first
appearance. It had been the elephant in the room all night with
Selina, every time Black Canary’s KREE signaled the scene was
repeating again in the study. Bruce knew better than to introduce any
subject that could lead up to it, and his strategist’s brain had quickly
mapped out all topics that could lead to that unwanted destination. He
could guess how the prospect of any Catwoman anywhere resembling, even
superficially, the Gotham Post’s depiction of her would antagonize Selina to
the point of… to the point of… Well, that was the troubling question, wasn’t
it…

“Jason,” Selina was saying testily,
“It may, in fact, be a matter of time until Hawkman hits Bruce with a clock,
but short hair, zip-up biker chick catsuit and goggles ARE NOT
NEGOTIABLE! It’s not just how they look—although they look
terrible (and look at me, Jason, am I going to mess with a look that can
rock Batman back on his heels?)—It’s what they MEAN! They’re that
guttertrash East End whore, and if you think for one minute that I—”

“I’m going to call Alfred,” Batman
announced quietly, while Jason slid his hands into his pockets and patiently
waited out the storm. Bruce removed his cowl, ran his fingers through
his hair, and walked thoughtfully to the kitchen.

…When it was just pixels on a page,
nothing more than the blatant lies of a supermarket tabloid, Selina had been
moved to overturn her life and interrupt her career as Catwoman in order to
stand on a stage and make the truth known. Now it was a life-size
three-dimensional image. But not flesh and blood, Bruce quickly
noted. He was acutely aware that, whatever these apparitions seemed
to be, whatever he theorized about them as alternate realities, they could
be nothing more than illusions created to manipulate them. It could
all be nothing more than a shadowplay designed to provoke a response.

The possibilities with respect to
Selina were truly… frightening. Ra’s said she was the heart of
the coming apocalypse. Jason said it. And Etrigan said it.
What if…

“Practical,” Selina spat, coming up
behind him, continuing some dialogue all her own. “Stupidest goddamn
thing I ever heard, what does a man with two-tone hair—never wore a
catsuit a day in his life—know about practical, hmm? You want to talk
practical, Handsome, lose the cape! Kittlemeier’s been on you about it
since he saw that movie.”

Bruce watched her affectionately as
she stormed around the kitchen pulling tins from the cupboard and slamming a
teapot down on the counter, all the while muttering about the “impractical”
lengths women go to with mascara, curling irons, and leg wax. Reality
was melting all around them, Existence itself threatening to implode, and
she was ranting about her costume.

“Maybe you really are the apocalypse,”
he said quietly.

∞ Wayne Manor, Mundus Alius 3

It was fifteen years since Thomas
Wayne Jr. had wrested control of the Wayne fortune from his father, and
twelve since he’d ejected the miserable old coot from the manor. So
how in the name of a Manus Masked Owl did Alfred Pennyworth get back inside
the house?

Pennyworth. That repulsive
sycophant that had to “stay with the senior Mr. Wayne” even when Tommy Jr.
offered to triple his salary. Of course, he’d only wanted Pennyworth
to stay in order to deprive his father of that last retainer.

But Pennyworth wouldn’t hear of it.
Tommy knew that must mean he had dirt on Wayne Sr. that made employment
there more profitable. And Tommy wanted that dirt—but when
bribery failed, and a few go-rounds with the business end of a lit cigar on
that gnarled liver-spotted hand failed to produce anything useful, Tommy
gave the old man a broken wrist to remember him by and sent him on his way.

So how—how was it possible that he’d
just seen Alfred fucking Pennyworth walk down the hall and into the kitchen?
Since then, there hadn’t been any sign of the old snake, but Tommy would
find him if he had to tear the house apart piece by piece.

∞ ∞ ∞

∞ Wayne Manor, Here and Now

Bruce sipped his tea and looked suspiciously at Selina.

“How did you make this?” he asked
while she loaded the pot, milk, sugar, and Jason’s mug onto a tray to bring
down to the cave. She smiled secretly, but didn’t respond to his
question.

“Selina,” he repeated, “That’s
Alfred’s tea exactly. How did you make this?”

“Hot water and tea, how else?” she said, starting for the elevator in
Alfred’s pantry.

Bruce’s determination to learn the answer was evident by the sudden,
perceptible density shift—followed by the Bat-voice.

“There are only four tins of tea in
this kitchen,” he said, following her to the elevator. “I’ve tried
them all, nothing tastes like this. Dick’s tried to make it; Barbara’s
tried. I think once Leslie tried. It never comes out like this.
Selina, I’m going to ask you one more time, and you’re going to tell me.
How did you make this?”

˜˜Alfred taught her when the girl Stephanie-Spoiler came to my realm.˜˜

The words sounded in Bruce’s mind, an
eerie but familiar mind-voice.

“Did you hear that?” Selina
asked, growing pale.

˜˜Leave us, Dark Mortal.˜˜

“I know that voice,” Selina said,
turning towards a clammy patch of cold she felt stirring at her right arm.
The cold congealed into a whitish mist; split into two parts, half white and
half black; and then solidified further into the body of a woman. Half
of her face was lovely; half ugly and misshapen. From her waist up,
her skin was pink and alive, while her waist down was dead and rotting.

“Hella,” Selina greeted the figure
with a sickly smile, “Bruce, you remember Hella, goddess of the
underworld, daughter of Loki, girlfriend of that big demon-ugly that took
over Robinson Park last year, turned everybody into Berserkers and tried to
bring on Ragnarok.”

˜˜Janus and I are no longer together,˜˜ the mind-voice announced,
regal but somewhat defensive. ˜˜He has departed the Fifth Circle
and elected to go ‘on walkabout’ in the infinite void. No one misses
him. He was a minor god—of doorways, and the mortal cults which worshipped
him passed long ago into the ether.˜˜

She turned to Bruce sharply.

˜˜I told thee to leave us, Dark
Mortal. And thy opinion of Janus’s motive for leaving the Netherworld thou
may keepest to thyself. I would speak to the sister in private.
If it will induce thee to leave us alone, thou may converse with thy
parents, who wait for thee beyond that door.˜˜

“I will not leave you alone with her,”
Bruce growled, stepping between Hella and Selina. “And I will not
believe that anything you conjure is my parents. It might look like
them, sound like them, but—”

KREEEEEEE

“Oh good, that’s just what was needed,” Selina muttered.

Hella turned towards the sound of the
piercing Canary Cry, and walked, fascinated, towards it. Bruce and
Selina looked at each other, then followed. They reached the study
just as Zatanna made her entrance and froze the finheaded alien attacking
Superman.

“-POTS! Eugael ekaw pu!” she
cried.

˜˜Behold, Sister. Behold, Dark
Mortal. Behold the cancer, the Mother of Oblivion, the heir of that
which should not be and so will not be. Your fault, Empty One. Your
magick. You would not be content with rabbit and dove, you would not
be content with illusion. ‘The Great’ ‘The Amazing’ ‘The Master of
Illusion’—You would not be content. You had to know true magick.
Edging your way to the center of the invisible labyrinth, was it worth it,
Empty One? Talking backwards, you could not go back. Such power
without cost. Knew you what cancer you brought into being? Knew
you what this, your true child, would bring forth in the hands of your blood
child?˜˜

A man with white hair suddenly stood
beside her, in the white tie and tails of an old-fashioned stage magician.
His right hand was stained with blood, his left held a tophat with the
bloody carcass of a white rabbit resting inside. Selina shrank back
from the image.

“That’s the man from the posters in
Zatanna’s apartment,” she whispered to Bruce. “Her father?
Zatara?”

Bruce nodded, and Zatara turned to both of them and offered a slight nod
that was almost a bow.

“You can see us,” Bruce noted.
“None of the others have.”

“I am not like others,” he said.
“I am not like any other. I am—I was, like you. I am of your
world, and I was born, like you, to live and die a man and hold no sway over
the powers of the cosmos. I was an Illusionist, but I wanted, like all
who deal in smoke and mirrors, to believe there was something more. I
married a woman born of mystics. Her people were all magic-folk, they
toiled for their powers, they crafted it over generations, it was—she
was—quite… beautiful. And I was seduced.

“I could not live content in a world
where such powers existed when I had none but the cheap trickery of
stagecraft. So I found my way to the maze, to the hollow at the center
of all. There I found the power I craved. And it was Empty.
It was ash in my mouth, talking backwards. But there was no returning,
no way back. Talking backwards, walking backwards, there was no way to
go back. So I hid in illusion and the cheap trickery of stagecraft
once more. Strings and sleight of hand.” He turned to Hella
before adding “And then death.”

“Okay,” Selina said calmly.
“Couple questions. First, while that was all very poetic, is there a
reason none of you people can ever come right out with a nice
straightforward explanation? Just up and announce ‘They’ve got
priceless cat icons in the vault at Sotheby’s, I’m going after them tonight,
stop me if you can?’”

Zatara looked at her with a sadly amused smile, then at his daughter who
he watched intently as he spoke.

“Can one ever tell a headstrong young
woman something she doesn’t want to hear?” he said. “I’ve said as much
as I dare, Selina Kyle. What I have wrought is my own burden.”

“Well that’s useful,” Selina said
acidly. “Hella, your turn. Why me? Why bring this whole
magical mess to me, hmm? Do I look like Harry Potter to any of you?”

“I came here, Sister, because it is
the place to be. I brought the Empty One because he is under geas to
speak, that the spark which smolders be put out before it bursts into flame
that consumes all. The Music of the Universe will not be silenced.”

The room darkened perceptibly, and a spotlight from nowhere fell on
Zatara.

“The Fire of the Berliani comes
again,” he said. “won sdne arataz.”

Blackness fell like a tarp over the
study, there was a clap of thunder, a flash of lightning, and when normal
lighting returned, Bruce and Selina were alone—until an eight-year-old boy
that looked very much like Bruce came running through the room with a
deerstalker cap and a magnifying glass.

“Well,” she said after a long moment,
“If we live through this, Eddie’s going to have his work cut out for him.
This is going to be hard to top.”

∞ Wayne Manor, Mundus Alius 3

Tommy Wayne still hadn’t worked out
how Alfred Pennyworth got into his house. He still hadn’t found where
Pennyworth was hiding. But he’d uncovered the first clue as to what
the limey scum was up to on his father’s behalf…

His father, the sniveling rat-bastard
coward. It was Thomas Wayne Sr. who was responsible for Bruce and his
mother being killed in that alley. Tommy had a hunch he’d engineered
it: give her a fat strand of pearls, lead her right to the gunman and be
done with her—maybe score some insurance and move on to fresher meat.
And Bruce, his little brother Bruce, must’ve got in the way. But even
if his father hadn’t engineered the murders, he never ate a bullet.
Tommy knew the only way his father could have survived that encounter was by
striking some cowardly bargain with the gunman. He’d vowed to take
down that monster, and that vow gave birth to Owlman. As Owlman, he’d
come into contact with beings of incredible power—incredible power and no
more brains than dirt. Ultraman was easier to maneuver than a trained
spaniel; Superwoman could be kept in line with a good fuck every few weeks;
Power Ring was just smart enough to see who was really running things and he
kissed ass accordingly; and Johnny Quick was helplessly bound to whoever
could provide his next fix.

In controlling those four, Owlman
controlled the world—which was gratifying, but it had taken time away from
his vendetta against his father. He’d let the old bastard live too
long, and now look at the result: his flunky Pennyworth roaming free
in the house. His flunky Pennyworth freeing Selina.

Tommy had just seen her walking into the morning room just as casually as
Pennyworth himself had gone into the kitchen earlier.

Selina. In the MANOR.
It was obscene. Downright kinky, in fact. So kinky Tommy was
sorry he hadn’t thought of it himself—but not like this. Her place was
in the cave, on her leash, with just enough chain to reach the gym to keep
herself fit and pretty, to reach the bar to pour his drinks when he returned
from patrol, and to reach the niche under his workstation to… entertain
him while he logged the night’s plunder.

∞ ∞ ∞

KREEEEEEE

Jason and Bruce remained impassive as
the echo of distant canary cry reached the Batcave. Selina looked
hatefully towards the clock passage and made a scratching motion, then
returned her attention to the meeting.

“The Berliani,” Jason said anxiously.
“You’re certain he said The Berliani?”

“The Fire of the Berliani comes
again,” Batman quoted. “That’s what Zatara’s ‘ghost’ said right before
he incanted himself out of existence. What does it mean?”

“It means our situation is very dire,”
Jason answered.

“We knew that,” Batman said coldly.
“Anything more specific?”

“I’m afraid not, not until I can do
some research. I recognize the name, it’s… a very obscure
legend among magic-users. I don’t recall the details.” He closed
his eyes with a pained expression. “And I trust it is not Etrigan
keeping me from remembering. He is still very quiet. It is most
disconcerting.”

“I’m more interested in what Hella
said,” Batman noted brusquely, reopening several screens on the workstation.
“She used the same phrases as Selina when you asked what she saw in the
water: a spark smoldering that will become a flame—and evidently burn
up most, if not all, of existence. And then she said ‘the music of the
universe won’t be silenced.’ Remember what Dr. Leiverman said about string
theory, that there was an ancient Hindu sect that believed almost the same
things that string theory is based on? The entire universe is sound,
vibrating filaments of sound. That’s why all the chanting, by the way,
to tie into the primal sound of the universe.”

“Y-yes,” Jason said uncertainly, as if sensing a trap.

Batman pointed to the largest screen looming over the cave, which
displayed a perfect sine wave.

“That’s what sound looks like: waves.
Sound waves. A pure tone is a perfect sine wave.” He pressed a
button and a low, steady tone played on the right desktop speaker.

“This is the same tone 180-degrees out of phase,” Batman said, bringing
up a second wave displayed immediately beneath it. He pressed a series
of buttons and the right speaker turned off, then the same tone emanated
from the left speaker.

“The tone is the same because it’s the same frequency, but this is
180-degrees out of phase.”

Another series of buttons and both speakers played. The effect was
strange, Jason noted, like someone was repeatedly covering and uncovering
his ears at opposite intervals and at a high rate of speed. He
actually had to grab the back of the chair to steady his balance for a
moment as his equilibrium shifted.

“Waves are mathematical, zero sum.
Add opposites together, they cancel each other out.”

Batman took a speaker in each hand, brought them close together, sitting
them only inches apart on the desk, and turned them to face each other. The
sound volume dropped to nothing.

After a moment, Batman pulled the speakers apart again and turned off the
tones.

“The ‘music’ of the universe won’t be
silenced?” he graveled. “If Leiverman is right, if everything that
exists, energy and matter, is all vibrating strings—and magic is a way off
changing their vibrations… …
Jason, think about it, alternate
dimensions bleeding in all over this house. What if two of them, two
magic-users, reached out at exactly the same time in exactly the same way to
change a given string’s vibration—and that is the result!” He pointed at the main screen as the
two waves merged into a single flat line.

“There’s your spark—they stopped a string from vibrating—to use the Hindu analogy, they silenced the music of
existence in one spot,, -spark--,” He snapped his fingers.
“And now it’s… smoldering, literally smoldering in the fabric of space-time,
one stilled String, slowing or stopping others around it. Little
patches of instability popping up at random, but eventually…”,” He snapped his fingers.
“And now it’s… smoldering, literally smoldering in the fabric of space-time,
one stilled String, slowing or stopping others around it. Little
patches of instability popping up at random, but eventually…”

Neither man said anything more, and
after a few seconds, it occurred to Batman that Selina hadn’t made any
contribution to the conversation. He looked over, and she had
performed that maneuver only she could: curling into a feline ball, a
seemingly impossible feat in the Batcave chairs, and falling asleep..

He jerked his head sharply to the side, signaling Jason to follow him
across the cave.

“Let her be,” he said in a hushed
whisper. “She hasn’t slept in two nights, between the anomalies last
night and Joker the night before.”

Jason hid his amusement that, of
course, Batman knew Selina’s secret about not sleeping while he was out
battling Joker. Instead, he returned to the more pressing issue,
matching Batman in the quiet intensity of his whisper.

“Let’s say you’re correct, two or more
magic users trying to ‘affect’ the same strings at the same moment.
Since Wayne Manor seems to be the heart of the cosmic disturbance, can we
assume the seeing ritual I began with Selina is one of those ‘inciting
incidents?’”

“No,” Batman said definitely.
“You hadn’t even started it, Jason.”

“Selina was involved, Bruce. And
Selina is the heart of this.”

“She didn’t do anything!” Batman
hissed emphatically.

“She hates Zatanna,” Jason said simply.

“Jason, between us, if that was enough
to start an apocalypse, we’d be on cosmic annihilation thirty-five since
January.”

Jason looked across the cave to the chair where Selina slept, then turned
back to Batman.

“She looked into the water and screamed,” he said. “Etrigan looked
into the water and screamed and hasn’t been heard from since. Bruce… I
really think that ceremony is the key.”

“IF you’re right, then what? If
that ceremony is the key, and if this whole crisis really is multiple
dimensions magically accessing the same strings, then which are they, how do
we find them? What did we touch?”

Batman too had turned to watch her sleep, and his lip twitched markedly
at this comment.

“Isn’t she? Look at that,
grabbing ten minutes wherever she can. Jason, I’ve known that woman
for a very long time, and there’s more to it than a name to rob jewelry
stores by. She is a cat-woman in so many ways. I don’t claim to
understand it, but—Jason?”

Jason Blood’s face had gone deathly pale.

“That—” he sputtered, then swallowed.
“That possibility had not occurred to me. That— Bruce, no, she’s an
ordinary woman. She couldn’t— If—”

Jason felt his heart pounding in his
ears as it hadn’t for decades. Selina Kyle was an absolute
cocktail of contradictions. Dark circles and such tired eyes that
morning, unable to sleep because Batman had been out late battling the
Joker. Reference the fact that she began as Batman’s enemy, and she
wouldn’t blush. Not so much as an awkward glance or a discomfited
pause would answer you—a naughty grin was the most likely response.
Now she was his wife in all but name, but the slightest hint at that
obvious reality would bring embarrassed denials, angry hissing, and probably
a lifetime exile from the Wayne dinner table and the pleasures of Leg of
Lamb a la Pennyworth.

“Spit it out, Jason. What are
you trying to say?”

“Cats are unique in the magic world,
Bruce. They’re the exception to every rule. Their ‘essence’ is a
mystery, and they defy any means of classification necessary to make the
magicks run true. Trying to hex one can bring about the most
unpredictable reversals. The powers of a black cat potion are the most
difficult to call or control… I, I shudder to think what magic performed on
a ‘purple cat’ might—””

“DON’T say what I think you’re about to say, Jason. Don’t even
think it.”

“Infinite dimensions, Bruce. Think about it: Zatara was named
as the source of a cancer. Zatara’s magic living on in Zatanna,
who we know has abused her powers in at least one reality. If any
Zatanna anywhere in any dimension tried to cast a spell on
Selina—”

Batman’s fist pulled back in a
blinding blur and stopped short within inches of Jason’s jaw. Through
the eyeslits of the mask, Jason saw the same lifeless, isolated emptiness
he’d seen on Bruce as he watched Selina take her seat at the ritual table.